Cincinnati—The University of Cincinnati (UC) will be among the largest neurosurgical residency programs represented today when medical school graduates across the country who want to be neurosurgeons are matched for training positions.

For the first time, three doctors instead of two will be matched to the UC neurosurgery department’s seven-year residency training program, an increase recently authorized by the Residency Review Committee of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Only 11 of the nation’s 97 neurosurgical departments enroll three or more residents a year.

“This increase reinforces our stature as one of the most prestigious departments of neurosurgery in the United States,” said department chair Raj Narayan, MD. “We compete with the top 10 to 15 programs in the country, and to receive the Residency Review Committee’s highest approval for expansion is a tribute to the program and the faculty.”

About 150 medical students apply to be matched with UC’s program each year, of whom 30 to 35 are interviewed and 20 to 25 are ranked.

“We rank them in our order of preference, and they rank programs in theirs,” Dr. Narayan said. “We usually get some of our top choices. It’s an inexact science, but we rank only those doctors whom we would be thrilled to have.”

In 2005 the department itself ranked 15th nationally among public medical school neurosurgery departments and 25th nationally among all medical schools in terms funding received from the National Institutes of Health.

The department, which has a full-time faculty of 17 neurosurgeons and offers fellowships in six subspecialties, performed 3,806 resident-assisted surgical cases in 2005–06 and produced 26 journal articles.

Fifty percent of its resident graduates have accepted positions at academic institutions during the last six years, and its resident and fellowship graduates work in 16 countries. The neurosurgery department represents the academic arm of the Mayfield Clinic.